Key Note Speakers

Key note speakers of the conference
“Growth in Transition”,
28 and 29 January 2010

Prof. Dr. Felix Ekardt, *01.04.1972, is a lawyer, philosopher, and sociologist, and Professor for Environmental Law and Legal Philosophy at the University of Rostock, Faculty of Law, Germany and Director of the Research Group Sustainability and Climate Policy. He is visiting lecturer at the University of Leipzig, Faculty of Philosophy. His Research Interests are Climate policy, theory of sustainability, theory of justice and WTO law. He is author for various national newspapers (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Financial Times Deutschland, TAZ, Capital, and others); political advisor on questions of climate protection for German Federal and Laender ministries and parliaments (e.g. for the Federal Government on questions of long-term climate protection strategies); as well as member of various advisory commissions. Among his other achievements are some 25 international presentations 2007-2009, including World Congress of Legal and Social Philosophy 2007 and 2009, World Congress of Sustainability Research, World Congress of Law and Sociology, etc. He was among the five “Young Researchers of the Year” selected by the Deutsche Hochschulverband (German Association of Universities) and the newspaper DIE ZEIT in 2007.

John Hontelez is the Secretary- General of the European Environment Bureau (EEB).
Hontelez studied non-Western sociology at the University of Amsterdam and specialized on the political anthropology of Latin America. After having finished his studies in 1979, he held several positions (including Secretary-General) in the national board of the former Pacifist, Socialist Party, Netherlands and worked among others for Friends of the Earth Netherlands (as board member), Europe and International (as Chairman).
Today, beneath his post at the European Environment Bureau, Hontelez is board member of the Institute for sustainable Development in Warsaw, Member of the coordination board of Ecoforum, a pan-European network of Environmental Citizens Organizations, as well as Chair of the Ecoforum’s Public Participation Campaigns Committee and Member of the Bureau of the Aarhus Convention for information rights on environmental issues.
→ Presentation by John Hontelez

Dr. Ashok Khosla is one of the world’s leading experts for environment and sustainable development. He was founding director of the Indian government’s Office of Environmental Planning and Coordination, the first such agency in a developing country. He was director of the United Nations Environment Programme and left the UNEP in order to found Development Alternatives, an NGO for the promotion of economical profitable environment-friendly technologies, based in Delhi. He was board member of several global environment organizations – including the World Conservation Union and the International Institute for Sustainable Development – and advised besides others the World Bank, the development programme of the United Nations and the Indian government. In 2002, Khosla was awarded the Sasakawa Environment Prize and  named in the UNEP’s Global 500 Roll of Honour. Since 2007, he also is President of the Club of Rome.

Prof. Dr. Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen’s research and writing focuses on globalization (including social, economic and political dimensions), immigration, global cities (including cities and terrorism),  the new networked technologies, and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions. In her research she has focused on the unexpected and the counterintuitive as a way to cut through established “truths”.
In addition to her appointments at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, Saskia Sassen serves on several editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities. She has received a variety of awards and prizes, most recently, a Doctor honoris causa from Delft University (Netherlands), the first Distinguished Graduate School Alumnus Award of the University of Notre Dame, and was one of the four winners of the first University of Chicago Future Mentor Award covering all doctoral programs. She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International,Vanguardia, Clarin, and the Financial Times, among others.
→ Presentation by Saskia Sassen
→ Saskia Sassen’s homepage with background information on her presentation

Dr. Paul Schreyer is the head of the National Accounts Division and Acting Chief Statistician at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. The areas dealt with in the Division comprise national accounts, prices, purchasing power parities and composite leading indicators. Paul Schreyer’s personal research areas include the measurement of capital and productivity, the measurement of output in the health and education sectors and price statistics. He is the author of the OECD Productivity Manual (2001), of the new OECD Manual on Measuring Capital (2009) and of a forthcoming Handbook on the measurement of health and education output and has published around 50 articles in the areas of economic measurement, information and communication technologies and their contributions to economic growth, productivity, and prices. In 2008-09, he was rapporteur in the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.
Paul Schreyer joined the OECD in 1988 and held positions in the Directorates for Science, Technology and Industry, Environment and Statistics. Before joining the OECD, he was a research fellow at the IFO Institute for Economic Research in Munich Germany and an assistant professor of economics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
→ Presentation by Paul Schreyer